• 7 - 8 bedrooms +
• 4 reception rooms +
• 5 bathrooms +
• 5.90 acres +
• Garden & parkland +
• Detached +

Hardington House is set within approximately six acres of beautiful, parklike grounds that contain an astonishing variety of more than 400 mature, broadleaf trees, both from this country and from more far-flung locations around the world. Standing on the side of Cold Harbour Hill in an elevated but sheltered position, the house looks out to the west and south over its own grounds to the surrounding countryside beyond, a view which becomes even more dramatic once the trees have shed their leaves in autumn.

It is also cleverly positioned within its Capability-Brown style landscape, so that the garden and grounds somehow seem to curtsey to the house. Built as a rectory in 1826 during the latter years of the reign of King George IV, with a later Victorian extension. This Grade II listed house is testament to probably the most elegant period of English architecture.

Today it has been beautifully and faithfully restored to its former glory by the current owners, a painstaking project undertaken over the past seven years. The house is built of stucco covered, local hamstone sheltering under a Welsh slate roof and has tall, 12-pane sash windows on the ground floor and 6-pane sash windows above. These combine to capture the best of the natural light throughout the day providing a wonderfully light and airy feeling throughout. The interior has large, well-proportioned rooms with tall ceilings, that are grouped around a central reception hall and first floor galleried landing, which are lit by light flowing down through a large rooflight. By 2018 the house had been empty for more than twenty years and had little done to it since being sold by the Church Commissioners after the war. As a result, it has retained nearly all its original architectural
fittings. These include an elegant, sweeping main staircase, timber and Blue Lias flagstone floors, intricately moulded coving and joinery, working shutters, internal servant call bells, an externally mounted coachman’s bell for summoning carriages and the vast majority of rooms have original and working fireplaces.

The ground floor incorporates four fine reception rooms that face either south and/or west, with the drawing room and study flanking the hall, the dining room conveniently adjacent to the kitchen and a charming rectory/garden room, where the rector once received his parishioners, with a vaulted ceiling and four sets of French windows that open onto the south-facing terrace, and the east courtyard garden. The house also incorporates two kitchens: a large Guild Anderson kitchen fitted with a 4-oven AGA and large marble central island plus French doors opening onto a balustraded terrace and a more intimate, smaller kitchen “for serious cooks”. Adjacent to it are a walk-through pantry and large larder. Beneath the ground floor is a suite of six cellars with probably 16th century cobbled floors, possibly indicating an earlier rectory on the site.